Wednesday, April 4, 2012

Ceiling Frescos

Last Friday was Backwards Day at Earl Beatty. The class wanted to do EVERYTHING backwards. I came up with an art activity for the class that was a bit backwards for them! We drew pictures underneath our desks! Read on to find out why :)

First we learned about fresco painting and how a long time ago the ceilings of some buildings (usually churches or chapels) were painted to look like the sky (some children made the connection that the sky might be Heaven, but we didn't stress that -- even though most of them were heavenly images) . We talked about scaffolding (and looked at pictures of artists painting on a scaffold), and how a painter would climb up a ladder in the morning and lie on his back painting all day (leaving only to go to the bathroom).This is an example of a ceiling painting:

We talked about what you see if you look straight up into the sky (clouds -- yes; grass -- no).

Then we lay underneath our desks (I taped paper under there) and drew the sky with pencils.

We learned that if you used an eraser, that you have to close your eyes and your mouth!

We coloured our drawings with oil pastels.

We took lots of breaks to rest our tired arms. The activity was more about the process than about the finished product -- we had a lot of fun!